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From 15 June, p 19 It is amazing that there are still doubts about whether human newborns are conscious and capable of experiencing pain. Newborn foals and calves are born with their eyes open and are capable of walking almost immediately after birth. I have been at the birth of several spectacled flying foxes, amazing …

I can't believe that scientists are conducting experiments to find out what every parent has known since the dawn of humanity, the moment they look in their baby's eyes just seconds after it takes its first breath: there is someone there. An ignorant, inexperienced, inarticulate someone, to be sure, but a person ready to be …

From Leader, 15 June Much of the backlash against "easy" weight loss via Wegovy and other GLP-1 drugs comes from culturally entrenched moralising, people leaping to judge others as "lazy" or "greedy" and not deserving to lose weight if they don't "put in the work". The fact that these drugs are so effective shows that, …

From 22 June, p 16 I was heartened to read of another organism that has taken to consuming one of our throwaway polymers. To be fair, given the high energy density of plastics, it isn't surprising that microbes are evolving to feed on them. I agree with Annika Vaksmaa about the dangers of introducing this …

From 22 June, p 40 I see with some alarm that you describe the New Horizons spacecraft as "plucky" – a term usually defined as having courage in the face of adversity. This seems to imply that the probe has acquired intelligence, can understand what it is doing and experiences human emotions. This isn't far …

From Letters, 22 June Robin Stonor asks why not throw rubbish in a volcano. On contact with hot lava, many materials would vaporise, causing explosions. Due to the lack of oxygen, plastics and organic materials would decompose, not burn – this would produce flammable and toxic gases, including greenhouse gases.

In salt sensitivity, each extra gram of sodium per day raises blood pressure by an average of 2.1 mmHg ( 8 June, p 32 ). A Kuiper belt object in a 2:3 resonance with Neptune completes two orbits of the sun for every three orbits the planet makes ( 22 June, p 40 ).

When it comes to our "cosmic perspective", there is one aspect of our existence that I find deeply significant. We are composed of matter and energy that has become capable of thinking about and describing matter and energy. Thus, through us and any other technologically advanced beings that may exist, matter/energy – and, by extension, …

The article "Digital damage?" misses the real danger to children from screen time – the extremely sophisticated marketing that sucks them into ruthless games that have no socially redeeming value. They are being purposely led deeper and deeper into a highly cloistered digital environment and away from being able to develop discrimination regarding how they …

You write about the singularity, the "infinitesimal point of infinite density" within a black hole. The concepts of infinitesimally small and infinitely large are extremely powerful in pure mathematics. But is their use acceptable in trying to model the physical universe? ( 15 June, p 32 ) At the centre of a black hole, the …